


One to Be Trusted

by samalander



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Post Avengers (Movie), disfunctional family, prisoner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he lost the battle in Midgard, Loki was taken home in chains. And if the Aesir couldn't heal him with magic, then they would do it with time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One to Be Trusted

**Author's Note:**

> Please be warned: Loki is not mentally stable at the beginning of this, and it can be debated how much healing he does. If this is a trigger for you, please proceed with caution.
> 
> Thanks to reverntbet, who will always be my Sif, and to daxcat, who loves Loki and led the cheer section on this.
> 
> And though they'll never know about this story, it owes so much thanks to my brother, who is no longer the man I was seeing; to my parents, who made some mistakes; and to all the wonderful mental health professionals along my road, who showed me how find reality and to forgive the past. I was never Loki, but I could have been.

Loki screamed in silence.

They removed the gag when they put him in his new cell, the new prison they'd constructed just for him, the tiny room meant to make him "heal". They gave him back use of his mouth and hands, and the women who styled herself his mother, the woman who he still loved despite himself, came to take his voice.

He stewed in silence for a few days until it became funny, until the hysteria and insanity started to bubble behind his eyes. He could feel himself tear as the stitches that held him together popped one at a time and he unraveled, fell to pieces on the floor, in silence and filth and shame and hatred.

He was a failure, he was nothing, he was the stolen piece of another world that no one could ever love.

He screamed, opening his mouth and his throat, trying to push it out of himself, the otherness, the wrongness, the _Jotun_ that tainted his being.

No sound came. He felt his throat rend, felt the loose pieces of his former self splinter and crack under the sonic assault, but there was nothing to mark it, nothing for anyone to see but poor, mad Loki, sitting in a corner in his own filth, making no noise.

* * *

On what could have been the second day or the fourteenth year of his wailing vigil, Frigga appeared again and sat next to him in his agony, lifted a cool cloth to wipe the grime from his face.

"Loki," she murmured, "please, Loki."

He wanted to keep screaming, to hurt her, to dam up her pity at the source and let the river of her feelings run dry. But her touch was anesthetic, calming and cool, and he leaned into it for the split second that allowed her to feel justified. 

"Loki," she said again, and he hated the word in her mouth. He hated the sound of the name they gave him - Loki Laufeyson, _Laufey_ son, Son of Jotunheim, son of filth and lies.

He screamed.

Frigga sat back on her heels, withdrawing her touch, and where her cloth had touched his face, there were burning trails of sensation, like she had wiped his face with venom, with acid.

With the love of the Aesir.

"Please," she said again. "Allow us to help you."

He would have laughed if he could make noise, if he had it in his broken mind to do anything but jibber and scream. Help him, yes, help, like they had helped Thor by casting him out, like they helped him by casting him into the void, by locking him in this cell.

_Help._

Loki should be king, of something if not everything; he should have people at his feet, falling to worship and lapping up his praise like it was air in the void. And here he was, imprisoned and mad, in the cells of a man who would call himself Loki's father. The man who claimed him as a spoil of war, and the woman who was that man's accomplice, the woman who held him in some kind of bizarre pitiable contempt.

He reared back and spat on the ground next to her, a pale glob of green against the gray stone of the cell's floor.

Frigga wiped his mouth with her cloth and stood, dropping a burning-cool kiss to Loki's forehead. 

"Rest," she told him, and Loki felt the honeyed words seep into his pores and fatigue overtake him.

He had time to curse her once before he fell, damning the Aesir and all who walked among them, that they would take even the autonomy of rest from him.

* * *

Loki quickly lost track of days as they faded into weeks and months and back into hours and seconds and time was relative, and time was mortal, and time was something he was utterly devoid of.

Thor came and Frigga came and Odin came, Sif and Hogun and Heimdall, Sigyn and Volstagg and Fandral - all the Asgardians Loki had ever seen as his family and friends came to mock him in his madness, came to delight in his punishment and confinement and subjugation.

Frigga told lies, and Odin too, about how they wanted to help, about how they loved him and about how they wanted to have their son back.

They had their son. He was called Thor.

Loki screamed sometimes and laughed others and cried in the dark times that once he would have called night. He was alone, utterly and wretchedly so, and even when the healers came to him and laid their hands on his body, he felt no relief.

In a time unknown, what could have been the longest second or the shortest millennium or every time between, Frigga granted Loki his voice back.

"The chamber has been charmed," she told him, "it was the work of many days, and I am sorry we could not do this sooner. You will be able to perform no magic while you are within these walls, and as such you will have your voice."

He didn't have his wits back, not quite, so he just growled, letting the very action of noise drive him forward, let it fill the room and his mind and his ears, the low sound of his fury. 

She tried to speak to him, tried to ask questions and solicit promises, but Loki wasn't hers, not this time, he wasn't there to please this woman or her family, the family they tried to assign him to.

And when she left, dropping another acidic press of lips to his forehead he laughed until his voice gave out, for the sheer joy of hearing it again.

* * *

He babbled unceasingly, words spilling forward like water or air or light. Sometimes he just managed sounds and his throat went dry and his voice gave out, but still there was sound, there were moans and clicks and the noises he could make without saying a word. There were even sneezes. A universe of noise that sounded so outside of his reality, so foreign, so real.

The Aesir came to check on him and he had no words to offer, they came to ask him why he did what he did and he had no answers so he just jabbered, alone in his cell and in company and with only his memories to warm him.

He thought of Barton, at times, of the gentle bend of the man's mind, arched like a bow, how the power sat in it like a throne, like Loki's throne, like the throne they owed him. He thought of the human's reverence for him, the work he did to please Loki, and, cruelly, the work he would have to do to clean it up, if he could.

There were days, now. Actual, measurable time. Loki found that when he could talk, he could understand time. He began to fathom what the hours were and how they passed, he saw how it didn't hurt to eat when he could ask the guards what he was being given, he did not ache for his own noise when he could be given news.

He felt himself slot together as time wore on, as the sun and moon moved in their mortal way, as people filed in and out of his rooms, taking and taking and taking, but now he had a voice to say enough, to stop their march.

He knew he was well on the day when he looked up at his guards when they laid a meal before him and said, his voice calm and clear, "I want to see the man who claims to be my father."

They nodded, left his food, and filed out. Loki sat back on his heels and waited.

The answer came back that Odin would not appear that day. The Allfather had business besides his ailing child to attend to, and that Loki would wait, as he always waited, and be satisfied with what he was given.

If they wanted him to wait, then Loki would wait. And he would plan, and when Odin appeared, when he deigned to show his face to Loki, Loki would be ready for the fight.

* * *

He was contemplating the battle on Earth, where he went wrong and where he should have won, when the light shifted and Loki looked up to find Thor silhouetted in the doorway.

"Brother," Thor said, by way of greeting, and Loki wondered what it was that he wanted, what he could possibly have to say that had not already been said between them.

"Thor," Loki returned, because this man was not his brother, not by any means Loki could judge. He had spent a lifetime, three, falling through the void before he found the Chitauri, and Loki had more than enough time, in his mad tumble, to contemplate every slight Thor had ever visited on him; every rejoinder to know his place, every mocking reminder that Thor was strong and Loki was weak, womanly, interested in _magic_ over conquest. There was plenty to remember; their lives were long, and Loki was sure that the longer he spent thinking on it the more wrongs he would find; all the times Thor chose his friends over his brother, the way Odin groomed him as the _oldest_ to ascend to the throne while still telling Loki he was a king - there were infinite wrongs to count, a million tiny violences that Loki had yet to catalogue.

"Our father--" Thor began, and Loki cut him short with a bitter laugh.

"Your father."

"The ALLfather is fallible," Thor stepped into the room, and the door shut solidly behind him - thanks, Loki knew, to his vigilant keepers, his friendly jailers. "He knows many things, but not all. If he is wrong in this, it is no more or less wrong than I was to wage war on Jotunheim or than you were to cut the hair of Lady Sif."

Loki's breath caught in his throat and he choked, hard, on a voice he had only just recovered. "You compare a lifetime of lies to a battle and an idle prank?"

"I compare your lies to the lies of others," Thor sighed. "Though we are not mortals, still we have some of their foolishness. There is no man, mortal or Aesir, who makes no mistakes."

"To lie is not a mistake," Loki growled.

"To lie in the name of protection and love is a great mistake, but one made in good faith."

"I have every right to hate him," Loki spat. "And you."

Sadness clouded Thor's face, and Loki felt the compulsion to wipe it away, to apologize and amend, but he schooled himself to ice, to his birthright. 

"You may hate who you hate, Brother. But do not pretend you are blameless in this."

"I did not choose to be found and lied to," Loki said, fighting down the anger that Thor provoked, the fury that rose in his chest when his brother stood before him.

"So your lies are blameless, and when a lie is told to you, it is a slight of the highest order. Can you not see why Father would do as he did?"

"He is not my father." Loki was angry, yes, and he could feel the heat of it boiling under his skin, threatening to crack and spill forth, to drown them both in rage.

"You talk in circles, Brother."

Loki threw up his hands in frustration. "I have a silver tongue."

Thor raised his eyebrows at his brother. "And what of mother?"

"Your mother?" Loki shrugged. "I do not know who my mother is."

"Our mother, Loki. The woman who raised us. Do you hate her as well?"

"She helped the lies to continue."

Thor sat heavily on the pallet that Loki slept on, one of the few pieces of furniture he'd been given in the name of their so-called recovery. "And me?"

"You were always the perfect one, Thor. Can you see why I might hate you?"

"No. I love you."

Loki shook his head. Of course Thor loved him; Thor loved everyone with no sense of propriety or discrimination, he loved with the innocence they had in childhood, the love of a man who had never been broken, and always been held up.

"Then listen well," Loki said, though he had no hope that he would be heard this time. "I was always in your shadow, never seen. I hate that you took the sun, that you took your father, that you--"

"Enough!" Thor roared, shooting to his feet. "When I was exiled and Father fell into the Odinsleep, Mother put you on the throne. She knew of your lineage, and yet she did not come to Midgard to retrieve me. She put you on the throne, and look what you did with it."

"I tried to bring glory--" Loki snarled.

"You tried to kill me and start a war."

Loki felt the power fall out of his rage. He had, in truth, done those things. But he had done them for Asgard, for the man who had been his father, for the people who the thought still might see him as equal.

"Is there no way you will see reason?" Loki asked, fighting down the urge to extend a literal hand to Thor.

"I ask the same of you."

Loki closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. How could it be that Thor claimed to love him, claimed to see him as a brother, and yet failed to understand him on such a fundamental level? It was inconceivable to Loki, who had spent so much time trying to fathom his family in his youth. He had turned to magic as an identity because it was a way of communication because he could find no other way to make himself heard. And here was a man that claimed to love him but could still not see who he was.

"Please," Thor began, but Loki shook his head.

"I have nothing you ask for, Thor. I have no words, and you have no understanding to offer if I did."

Thor sighed softly and turned to leave. He did not look back.

* * *

When the door opened next, when the visitor came, it was not who Loki expected.

She stood, uncomfortable, in the room, like she was worried that every brick, every bit of furniture or trapping of comfort they had afforded him would attack.

"Lady Sif."

"Loki."

It grated that she did not call him Lord, the way she did his brother. They were equals, Thor and Loki, had always been equals, and yet the dark-haired daughter of Asgard held Loki below the rest of his family.

"Are you well?" she asked, and he shrugged.

By the evidence of the stars that he could see, Loki had been in his cell for three months - he figured two of them lost to the silent, mad nights and endless babble that had returned him to himself, and one to the coherence he had fought for.

"As well as can be," he said. "And you?"

"What happened?" she asked, and Loki stared for a long moment. 

"In Midgard?"

Sif shook her head. "In the void."

Loki felt a shudder fall through him, cold like the splinters of the bifrost that had pierced his skin, like he was falling again.

"I-" his voice sounded ragged, so he stood, taking some dark pleasure at the way Sif's hand ghosted over the pommel of her sword when he moved, and took a draught of water from the glass that sat with the remains of his lunch. "I spent an eternity there," he said, his throat moistened.

Sif said nothing for a long, empty moment, and Loki drank again, for lack of anything better to do.

"Did you go mad?"

Loki shrugged, and then nodded, and then shook his head. "They would have you think so," he said. "And perhaps I did."

He didn't tell her about landing, broken, and waiting to heal. He didn't tell her about the long, cold nights in the desert of Thanos' asteroid, didn't tell her that he had spent lifetimes hating his brother and his father and all of them, that he had vowed his revenge and taken it as best he could.

He didn't tell her about the gauntlet, didn't tell her what Thanos wanted, or what the Chitauri stood to gain.

"Why did you try to destroy Midgard, knowing that Lord Thor cherishes it?"

"Why would I give you that information?" he asked.

Before she could respond, Loki smiled, knife-sharp, and he was at her side in the passing of a breath. Before she could draw her sword, he had a hand over hers and his lips were against her ear. "And what would you give me for it?" he breathed.

Her elbow came back to meet his stomach, as he knew it would, and he jumped back, taking the blow glancingly. Still, he fell, and feigned injury - Lady Sif believed him fragile, that much was clear. Best to stroke her ego.

She sneered down at him for a moment, before schooling her features back to neutrality. "Heal, Lord Loki," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, and she swept from the room.

He waited until her footsteps had faded, and then let the laughter come. It was the most fun he had been able to have in _months_.

* * *

Others came; some to talk, like Frigga, and others, like Sigyn, to sit and help him keep silence.

Sometimes Thor came, bearing gifts and memories and the things he thought would heal Loki's shattered mind.

If only it needed healing.

But it was two more weeks of contemplation, long enough for the rancor to flow thick through Loki's veins again, before the door of his cell opened to admit the Allfather.

Loki did not rise to meet him, and Odin did not step further into the room than he needed to.

"You summoned me," Odin said, by way of greeting.

"Weeks ago," Loki responded.

"Forgive me. There is a kingdom that needs ruling."

Loki shook his head. "There is always something," he said.

Odin nodded. "There is. Today, there is you."

Both of them let the silence stretch from that comment, neither willing to admit what it meant to him.

Finally, Odin let out a breath that echoed the one Loki was holding.

"When you fell-"

Loki closed his eyes. "When Thor cast me into the void?"

"When you _fell_ ," Odin repeated. "You said that it was for me. What you had done, that you were doing it for me."

"And you told me," Loki growled, barely unclenching his teeth to speak, "That I never could have,"

"I did not."

Loki hated this man with every cell of his body, and anger flared hot and dark in his chest. "You did! You said ‘No, Loki,' No, I was never going to be good enough. No, I never could have done enough. No, I was never your _son_."

"No, Loki," Odin said. "You never had to."

It was like someone had punched him in the stomach, the way Loki felt the fight shudder out of him. "I never-"

"You were always my son."

"I was a spoil of war."

"You were my son." Odin took a step into the room, a step closer to Loki.

Someone screamed, the most animal, primal noise that Loki had ever heard, and the table that held his pitcher of water went topping over, painting the floor with water and shards of ceramic, like a sad mosaic.

It took Loki a moment to realize it was his hand that had thrown it and his voice that had screamed, that he was on his feet and seething with anger at the man who had raised him.

Defeated, furious and humiliated by that fury, Loki sank to his knees, sharp pieces of pitcher cutting into his skin, letting out blood to tint the spilled water pink.

Odin waited. When Loki didn't move, he spoke.

"Will you listen to my words now, Loki, and not lose your temper?"

Loki nodded. "I have no temper left, Allfather."

"You asked me why, once. Why I kept you. Why I took you."

"And you told me how I was to be useful to you, a part of your scheme to unite the realms," Loki felt the sadness like an oppressive cloud settle on his shoulders. He could never forget that day in the treasure room, the stunning realization that he was just a tool.

"What do you know of my parentage?" Odin asked.

"Your father was Bor, Architect of Asgard."

"And my mother?"

Loki shook his head. "I do not know."

Odin smiled sadly before holding out a hand, tinged blue with age, and Loki felt a chill at the way veins stood out under the skin when one got to be the age of the Allfather. 

"My mother was called Bestia," he said. "She was a Jotun."

The room spun. "You lie."

"No, Loki, not here. Not now."

"Then-- if you are-- why did you keep the truth from me?" 

"I have no reason that you will call good."

Loki felt like screaming. No reason he would call good. No reason at all, none to keep him secret, none but shame.

"I wanted you to feel as though you were a child of Asgard," Odin said, "as though you were my child, for in my heart you are to me as Thor is."

"Then why was he made king and not I?" Loki asked.

"As I recall, Thor has never sat on the throne of Asgard, and you have."

"But you were going to give him the throne."

Odin nodded. "I was," he agreed. "Because he is the stronger warrior, and the first born."

"Then why tell me I was born to rule?"

"There are many way to rule," Odin said. "Few of them require a throne."

Loki found he had nothing to say, no reply that would take the wind from Odin's sails. With no retort, there was no way for him to say what it was they were both thinking - that in Asgard, the way to rule was by the sword.

"I thought you would be the mind that guided your brother," Odin said, his voice cracking with emotion. "I thought you would be the force that grounded him in knowledge and history, even as he ruled with power and authority. I thought you would be a team."

No one had to say what Loki thought, because Odin already knew it - Loki was not a man to be on a team. He was not one who played well in organized sport. He was the one who stood apart.

"I misjudged you," Odin said. "and for that, you have my apology."

Loki closed his eyes. "I am tired," he said, because there was nothing left to say.

"Then sleep," Odin told him, and turned to leave the room.

Loki watched him go, his thoughts swimming with ice, with blue tinges and the ways of Asgard. If Odin told the truth, if there was any veracity under his words, than Loki had more than a little to consider.

But all he could think of, his mind dark and swirling, was the soft press of Frigga's lips to his forehead.

* * *

The weeks following Odin's visit were quiet for Loki; in part because he refused visitors, but also because, as Loki's guards told him, Thor had returned to Midgard to do whatever it was Thor did when he was in Midgard. 

When two weeks had passed, with no sign of Thor or Odin back to visit, Loki grew restless. So, perhaps he could be forgiven for allowing the Lady Sif into his cell again, even if his reasoning ran along the lines of needing someone to antagonize.

"This will be brief," she said as she swept through the door, her hand resting on her sword.

"Will it?"

She scowled. "What have they told you of your _sjaund_?"

"Thor informed me that you all mourned."

Sif nodded. "We did."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "And why does the Goddess of War come to tell her betrothed's brother of his funeral?"

"Because," Sif bit, through clenched teeth, "her betrothed's brother seems to be stuck on thinking of that brother as the man he knew before the _sjaund_. Before his exile, and time on Midgard. You still see Thor as the man who sought battle and fought for the sake of fighting."

"Yes," Loki agreed. "Your betrothed's brother works within the realm of reality."

Sif shook her head. "You are a fool, Loki, to assume that Thor would not be changed what he went through, and by thinking you dead."

"Did he weep?" Loki felt the sneer in his voice, but he didn't care. If Thor wept, then better for Loki. It would be ammo, a weapon to wield, when his brother came next.

"He mourned."

"And what," Loki asked, "is your point, Lady Sif?"

He saw her mouth tighten to a smile, her lips pulled taut against her teeth, and he tried not to provoke her because (and only because) she was armed and he defenseless without his magic.

"My point, _Lord_ Loki is that that your brother is no longer the fool who lead us into Jotunheim on a suicidal romp. He has learned how to use his power, and the mortals, whatever you and I might think of them, have taught him temperance."

"Temperance," Loki said, tasting the word as it slid across his tongue.

"You would do well to observe your brother," she said. "With an unbiased gaze."

Loki scoffed. "The Lady Sif speaks to me of bias," he said. "Tell me, Lady, how are you enjoying your haircut?"

He knew it was over the line, but he didn't care. Who was she to come and lecture him? Who did she think she was, some kind of saint, some kind of perfect Aesir maiden, rife with fury and aggression, to come and tell him how to keep his house clean? She could burn, for all the care Loki had.

He braced for her blow, for the ringing in his ears and the throbbing of blood, but it didn't come.

"If you were kind," she growled, her knuckles turning white where she gripped her weapon, "I would call you pitiable."

Her face still contorted in rage, Sif swept from the room.

This time, Loki didn't laugh - he didn't have it in him. She was arrogant, cruel. She was so sure of her own superiority, so comfortable on her own pedestal.

And, to be fair, he'd never seen Thor interact with the mortals. Mostly Loki thought Thor's obsession with their realm was strange and off-putting, and he had trouble imagining why the Allfather allowed it to continue.

(Well no, he understood perfectly why the Allfather allowed it to continue. He just thought it was odd that his brother was obsessed with the mortals and that his father, who had found Loki's love of magic to be "weak" and "womanly," coddled and indulged all of Thor's predilections for strange hobbies.)

Perhaps Lady Sif wasn't wrong. He would never say as much to her - wouldn't do for the maiden to have an even higher opinion of herself, if such a thing were possible. Perhaps it wouldn't be unwise to observe Thor, to whatever extent that he could.

* * *

When he returned weeks later, Thor came Loki's cell reeking of humanity – he was ripe with the slight scent of rot they had, the way their bodies were always decaying around them - and took his customary seat against the wall.

"How was your trip?" Loki asked, feigning disinterest. For all he could care less about Thor's little fixation, it was admittedly better to hear about his forays into the mortal realm than to sit in the cell day in and day out, wishing for anything different.

Thor smiled broadly, but he did everything broadly.

"It was invigorating," he grinned. "We did battle with a Doctor of Doom!"

Loki did his best not to roll his eyes. Of course they did. Thor had always had battle in his heart.

"Did you vanquish him soundly?"

A look crossed Thor's face, one Loki could only term as _pained_. "Do you mock me?"

"Of course I mock you."

Thor let out a long breath. "If I ask, will you tell me your grievance?"

Loki stared for a long moment. It was a fair question, he supposed. A question Thor had asked multiple times, and never heard the answer to. Not in the way Loki intended.

"I have told you before."

"Have you?"

"You fail to listen."

Thor spread his hands. "I am listening now, Loki. Tell me."

Loki shook his head. It was futile. Every time Thor had asked, Loki had answered. On the hill on Midgard, here in this cell; every time the questions came up, the reply fell on deaf ears. But the words were rising in his throat, unbidden, like the screams had when he was first confined. Loki would tell him, again, but this would be the last time. He swallowed around his anger and spit the words at his brother's feet.

"You have everything, Thor, and I am in a cell. You were never lied to or treated as fragile. You were never a pawn in your father's game."

Thor bristled. "You can't _blame_ me, bro-"

"It's not a question of blame," Loki cut across him. "It's a question of this is a thing that happened. That is still happening. And if you didn't cause it, that doesn't make it better. Because it still _happened_."

Thor seemed to think about that - as much as he ever thought about anything - and after a moment that might have spanned more time than Loki's entire incarceration, he nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Then I apologize," Thor said.

"What?"

"I apologize for the wrongs you suffered at my expense. I cannot go back and change them, Brother, but know that I would if it were possible."

Loki stared. Before his time in the void - his time on the throne, even - he would have believed such things. Believed that his brother had always loved him and always would. Now it was harder to swallow, but not impossible. There were things to point to such an idea. Things that had happened on Midgard, and since he'd been back. The things Sif had said - perhaps they weren't all the ravings of a woman mad with love. Perhaps she had been slightly - partially - not wrong.

Because there was a memory Thor on the Tower of Stark, trying to reason with him rather than fighting. Because Sif had come to visit, when she hated Loki. Because when Loki was defeated, Barton didn't put an arrow through his skull, as Loki knew he wanted to - as the archer's heart had sang of when he was under the staff's thrall. Because there were things in Loki's life that only could have occurred with Thor's insistence and intervention.

It was not unlikely that Thor loved him. It was just painful, and sad. Loki bit his tongue until he tasted blood. There was nothing he could say that would not humiliate him.

Thor stood, brushing imaginary dust off his knees. "And know that you caused your own share of strife in our childhood. Know that your harmless pranks hurt and humiliated the people I love. We are none of us blameless for the people we were, but Loki. We have such long lives. Why not use them to change, to become better?"

Loki didn't laugh, though his first inclination was to mock his brother soundly for such sentiment. "The humans would say we cannot change. God of thunder, God of mischief. We are immutable."

Thor smiled, and there was sadness in his eyes. "Until a few years ago, Brother, the humans would have said we did not exist. What makes you think they know anything about our ability to change?"

Loki hung his head. Perhaps Thor was right. Perhaps he owed an apology or two. Or perhaps he needed to pretend that he did, just long enough for someone to let him out of the goddamn cell.

* * *

The second time Loki requested an audience with the Allfather, it took only two days for him to appear, with Frigga regal and stern at his side.

"Loki," she said, reaching for his hands.

He wondered if her magic worked in the spelled chamber, or if all powers were null. If she could see into his mind or his soul through her touch, she would never allow Odin to release him. But it was not something he could ask without tipping his hand.

"Mother," he replied, the word like poison on his tongue. "and-- _Father_." Calling his jailer that burned like acid, but Loki swallowed it down, all of it, and did not dwell on this last injustice.

"Loki," Odin replied. "You summoned us."

"My brother has shown me that I owe you a--" Loki sighed. "An apology. For the wrongs I committed against you."

Odin nodded. "What wrongs are those?"

"Forging an alliance with the Chitauri to throw you off the throne. Allowing Jotuns into Asgard. Any of a number of pranks and misdeeds that I called humorous when I was young. Take your pick; I feel remorse for all of them."

Frigga let out a soft sob, clutching Loki's hands tightly. Then she was devoid of power, and he was as skilled a liar as he had ever been.

"Thank you," Odin said. "I have already offered it, but again - I apologize for thinking of you as anything less than you should have been. You will always be a prince of Asgard, Loki, and you were always our son. Nothing less."

Loki allowed tears to enter his eyes - he was a skilled crier, always had been. He would claim to his deathbed that this was an act, but he knew in his heart, in the quiet spaces where none but him could see, that the tears were unbidden.

"Will you allow me to make penance?" Loki asked, his voice cracking with emotion.

Frigga rose and moved to stand next to Odin, her hand now finding a solid place on her husband's arm. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Loki. You will be allowed to make amends."

There would be no grinning, none, so Loki bit it down as Odin moved to the door and knocked once.

The guards swung the heavy portal open, and Odin stepped back, sweeping Frigga in his wake, so Loki had a view, for the first time in ages, of the world beyond his cell, unobstructed by doors or guards or sorrow.

Loki peered out the doorway and into the halls of Asgard, shining and clean like they had been for his entire childhood. He imagined himself, small and dark-haired, laughing and running with Thor, playing all the games they had favored - grand, loud romps that rattled the court and angered their parents.

He took a step out of his cell, onto the glowing marble.

There were more things to be done - there were amends to make and revenges to take and so many people to make pay for the wrongs they had committed. But for now, he took a lungful of air - rarefied, clean air, the kind he hadn't felt in the millennia since he fell from the bifrost - and allowed a smile to crack his features.


End file.
